René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"[ENH]: Support using datetimes as `positions` argument to violin(...)","articleBody":"### Problem\n\nIt should be possible to set the position of a violin plot to be a datetime, but currently this fails:\n\n```python\nimport datetime\n\nimport matplotlib.pyplot as plt\n\nfig, ax = plt.subplots()\ndatetimes = [\n    datetime.datetime(2023, 2, 10),\n    datetime.datetime(2023, 5, 18),\n    datetime.datetime(2023, 6, 6)\n]\nax.violin(\n    [\n        {\n            'coords': datetimes,\n            'vals': [0.1, 0.5, 0.2],\n            'mean': datetimes[1],\n            'median': datetimes[1],\n            'min': datetimes[0],\n            'max': datetimes[-1],\n            'quantiles': datetimes\n        }\n    ],\n    positions=[datetime.datetime(2020, 1, 1)]\n)\n```\n\n```python\nTraceback (most recent call last):\n  File \"/Users/dstansby/software/mpl/matplotlib/test.py\", line 11, in \u003cmodule\u003e\n    ax.violin(\n  File \"/Users/dstansby/miniforge3/envs/mpl-dev/lib/python3.12/site-packages/matplotlib/_api/deprecation.py\", line 453, in wrapper\n    return func(*args, **kwargs)\n           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^\n  File \"/Users/dstansby/miniforge3/envs/mpl-dev/lib/python3.12/site-packages/matplotlib/axes/_axes.py\", line 9064, in violin\n    line_ends = [[-0.25 if side in ['both', 'low'] else 0],\n                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^\nTypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'float' and 'datetime.datetime'\n```\n\n### Proposed solution\n\n_No response_","author":{"url":"https://github.com/dstansby","@type":"Person","name":"dstansby"},"datePublished":"2025-08-12T10:50:54.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":3},"url":"https://github.com/30417/matplotlib/issues/30417"}